Crop Cultivation and Wild Animals
Plant agriculture leaves one of humanity's biggest ecological footprints and hence has major implications for wild-animal suffering. Crop cultivation plausibly reduces populations of large animals, although the sign of impact is less clear for insects, and overall there's extremely high uncertainty in this analysis.
Summary Plant agriculture leaves one of humanity's biggest ecological footprints and hence has major implications for wild-animal suffering. Crop cultivation plausibly reduces populations of large animals, although the sign of impact is less clear for insects, and overall there's extremely high uncertainty in this analysis. At the end of this piece, I begin an attempt to rank different crops according to how good vs. bad they seem for wild animals. While my method is very crude and imprecise, I come to the general conclusion that beans and nuts are better, while grasses/grains are worse.…
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